


Internal Affairs

by Telanu



Category: The Closer
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamory, Secret Relationship, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 06:39:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2300060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telanu/pseuds/Telanu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It looks like love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Internal Affairs

**Author's Note:**

> I first posted this story nearly two years ago. I started writing it shortly after “Fresh Pursuit” (The Closer 7x10) aired, so the plot details (and, to some extent, the characterizations) within have since been thoroughly jossed. In particular, Sharon bears little resemblance to the character we now see on _Major Crimes_ , but if we all cast our minds back to the past...

The evening starts with two people getting drunk and one designated driver picking them up from the bar. It concludes with three bodies tangled up in the sheets. They each have their reasons: Fritz and Sharon adore Brenda. Fritz and Brenda are immensely grateful to Sharon. And the thing about Sharon is, she’s generally out for whatever she can get. On this particular night, completely soused, what she gets is Brenda’s hands in her hair (“To tell you the truth, I’ve always just loved your hairdos”), and Fritz acting as the voice of reason (“You two are _tanked_ ”), and then Sharon kissing Brenda (“Mmm”), and then Fritz saying, “Okay, that’s enough, I think we can all behave ourselves like adults,” but his pupils--Brenda notices--have dilated until his irises almost disappear.   
  
She gives Fritz a long, slow grin while Sharon mumbles “No, I want this, I really, really do,” against her neck. And Fritz gulps. Brenda shivers. They all three want this. They really, really do. But Fritz lays down the law: “Not while you’re drunk. Trust me on this.”  
  
And he lies between them on the bed, fending off their increasingly clumsy advances until Sharon passes out cold and Brenda pouts all the way to sleep.   
  


* * *

  
The next morning, he wakes up to see his wife peering at Sharon across the expanse of his chest with bleary, reddened, hungry eyes. She drums her fingertips impatiently against his ribs. Sharon is pretending to be asleep, but she’s tucked up so close against him that he can feel her shaking--just a little--with terror.   
  
He can imagine how badly she doesn’t want to open her eyes, how much she wants to vanish into thin air rather than face them sober.   
  
He tries to feel duly sympathetic, but can still smell her perfume, and in the morning light coming through the window, she looks more like a redhead than a brunette. Of course, there’s only one way to find out about _that_ for sure. Then he wonders if he’s a bad person.  
  
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Brenda mutters as her hand quests down between his legs and finds his morning wood. He hisses. “I knew it.”  
  
He shifts his hips until she moves her hand away, letting him think again. “Well?” he whispers.  
  
“Well what? What do you want me to do?” She looks up at him, gnawing her bottom lip in worry, before glancing meaningfully at Sharon. Who is almost doing an admirable job of keeping her breathing deep and slow.  
  
He runs through what he knows about successful group dynamics and says, “Well, I’m gonna make a pot of coffee. Why don’t you take care of this?”  
  
Fritz knows he hasn’t imagined the way Sharon’s breathing stops, just for a second.  
  
Then he clambers over Brenda and walks uncomfortably towards the kitchen, pausing to take a leak in the hall bathroom, which helps. Through the door, he can hear the muffled sound of his wife’s voice. She’s coaxing. Cajoling. Soothing. She sounds exactly the same as she did the one time she tried to talk Joel down out of a tree. Then, when Fritz is in the kitchen, her voice stops.  
  
It seems to take an inordinately long time before the coffeemaker starts sputtering. He’s not sure why he chose this particular signal, but the moment that the brown liquid starts to drip down into the carafe, he practically sprints back to the bedroom.   
  
Brenda’s taking care of things nicely.  
  
Sharon’s flat on her back, with her blouse open and her bra pushed up while Brenda sucks and licks her nipples, and she doesn’t seem to be getting enough air. She looks up and sees Fritz in the doorway, opens her mouth to say something, and then just groans. But she doesn’t close her eyes, she just stares at his face and then, a second later, his really obvious erection.   
  
Jesus. He can’t get to the bed fast enough, but once he’s there, he doesn’t know what to do, other than watch Sharon’s hand run shakily through Brenda’s hair. She’s still looking up at him, eyes wide and bewildered, even as a flush creeps up the pale skin of her chest.  
  
“Fritzy, honey,” Brenda says between licks, “be sweet, won’t you?”  
  
Sweet. He can be that. He bends and kisses Sharon very sweetly indeed, wondering what her next move is going to be--or if, for once, she doesn’t have one. Will she kiss him, does she want him...she’s walked in on him and Brenda often enough, and the look on her face was easy to recognize, but was that only for Brenda or--  
  
She groans again, kisses him back, opening her mouth. Warm. It is a little awkward, with Brenda lying right on top of her like that, but they all find a rhythm that doesn’t pause until Sharon slides her fingertips up the inside of his thigh. And then cups him.  
  
 _“Nnngh,”_ he says, which is Brenda’s cue to raise her head, and then her eyebrows, and then the corner of her mouth. But the look she turns on Sharon is soft and fond.   
  
“Oh my God,” Sharon suddenly says, and closes her eyes, dropping her hand so that Fritz’s hips buck into thin air.  
  
“No, no, no,” Brenda soothes, patting her thigh, and then pushing up her skirt. “I told you. It’s all right.” Sharon gasps and her eyes fly open again.   
  
“What are we doing _oh,”_ she says, when one of Brenda’s hands disappears beneath her skirt.   
  
“Well, we’re sober now,” Brenda says while Fritz watches the hem of Sharon’s skirt slide higher and higher up her thighs. “But I think we talked this through last night, I mean sort of, and really, it’s about time we all had a nice Saturday morning together, isn’t it?” She glances at Fritz.   
  
“It is,” he agrees fervently. “That is...assuming you remember last night, Sharon?”   
  
“I--I--”  
  
Brenda moves her hand up farther. Sharon’s eyes close and she gasps. “Part of her does,” Brenda coos. “Honey, is this all for us?”  
  
“Oh, God!” Sharon manages.  
  
“Well, thank you,” Brenda says with her wickedest leer. “Thank you so much. Now...” She moves her hands around and lifts Sharon’s ass off the bed in a way that can only be considered brisk, and suddenly, she’s got Sharon’s panties off and tossed to the other side of the mattress.   
  
“Chief--Brenda--” Sharon clutches at her own hair and looks back up at Fritz with dazed, glazed eyes. “Do you want, you can’t want--”  
  
He kisses her again, she gasps, and is silent until they part. Then she manages a whimper.   
  
“He’s good with his mouth,” Brenda murmurs, and when Fritz looks at her, her eyes are narrow and bright with need.   
  
“Oh, fuck,” Sharon says, her head falling back down on the pillow, her eyes closing. Her nipples are beautiful, brown hardened peaks that rise and fall with her breath.   
  
“I would love," Brenda says, “to watch that.”  
  
“And I,” Fritz says, “am also good with demonstrations.”  
  
“As you know, don’t you, Sharon?” Brenda adds. “I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve stumbled upon Fritzy and me in an intimate--”  
  
“You’re the most horrible teases,” Sharon pants, keeping her eyes squeezed shut. “The two of you, I swear, everywhere I turn--”  
  
“Poor Captain Raydor, trying to be so professional and everything, and there we are, smoochin’...”  
  
“--you’re lying in wait, in your office or a freaking hallway--”  
  
“That one time in the stairwell,” Fritz agrees.  
  
“You do pick your moments,” Brenda says.  
  
“I don’t think it’s my bad timing,” Sharon grits. “I think it’s that you two never _stop.”_  
  
They should be so lucky, on a law enforcement schedule. It’s more about grabbing each moment that comes your way. But Fritz isn’t one to pass up a good segue, so he says, “Well, no need to stop now. How about we--”  
  
“Were you doing it on purpose?” Sharon blurts. She opens her eyes and props herself up on her elbows. Brenda tilts her head quizzically. Fritz decides that nobody should look good when they’re hungover with crazy morning hair, but here are two women pulling it off right in front of him.   
  
Brenda flat-out licks her lips, and Sharon twitches before continuing, “Were you, have you two been trying to, to, to--”  
  
“You? Hesitatin’?” Brenda says.  
  
Sharon blushes. “Seduce me?” she mumbles.   
  
Brenda and Fritz look at each other. Frankly, Fritz is wondering the same thing. Maybe they never planned it or talked about it, but whenever they caught word that Captain Raydor was heading for Brenda’s office, or heard the clack of her stilettos around the corner, it was awfully easy to be caught in a clinch. And when they heard her breath catch, it was even easier not to separate right away.  
  
“Or were you just being cruel?” Sharon adds, and Fritz can almost feel the arousal physically draining out of her body. “Taunting me? I wouldn’t have thought you’d--I don’t know _why_ you’d--”  
  
Brenda leans in and kisses her gently, slowly, cupping her cheek in one hand. Then she whispers against her mouth, “Oh no, honey. We were not,” kisses her again, and it’s the hottest thing Fritz has ever seen.  
  
He curls up behind Sharon, pressing his erection against her thigh and putting an arm around her waist. Brenda briefly glares at him when she is dislodged. He ignores it in favor of sliding his hand up Sharon’s belly and cupping her right breast, rubbing his thumb over the nipple until she writhes. “We’re not so much into taunting,” he says.   
  
“‘Cept in the fun way,” Brenda adds between kisses, then she pauses. “Unless this isn’t fun for you? I’d hate to think--”  
  
Sharon lunges forward, grabs Brenda by the hair again, and yanks her down, kissing her with a low moan. Fritz watches as her other hand fumbles and slides up and down Brenda’s back, clutching at the wrinkled blouse Brenda still wears, because both women had fallen asleep in their clothes.   
  
He tweaks Sharon’s nipple again, making her jerk, and then tugs at her bunched-up bra. “Think we ought to take care of both your clothes,” he murmurs, kissing Sharon’s ear. “Can’t be comfortable.”  
  
“Well, and there’s you in your sexy pajamas,” Brenda says, nuzzling Sharon’s jaw even as she reaches over and plucks at Fritz’s old t-shirt. “No wonder we’re all hot and bothered.”  
  
Fritz looks her dead in the eye and says, “We might be hot and bothered because we all want to fuck the daylights out of each other, so why don’t we get naked and get started on that?”  
  
Brenda’s eyes glaze over. He loves that expression so much. For her part, Sharon turns her head to look up at him, her lips parted and swollen. “You’re, um. You’re very direct,” she says.   
  
“Isn’t he?” Brenda asks, leaning over Sharon and nearly crushing her as she kisses Fritz hard on the mouth. “Don’t you just love it?”  
  
“Hey, I can be romantic when it counts,” Fritz says, pointedly nudging Brenda until she rolls off Sharon with a remorseful wince. “Just not at nine a.m. on a Saturday when what we really want--as I said--”  
  
“Fuck the daylights out of me,” Sharon whispers. They turn to stare at her with wide eyes, and she goes scarlet as she amends, “I mean, out of each other, of course that’s what you sa--”  
  
Minutes later, she’s clinging to Brenda and wailing against her throat while Fritz licks long stripes between her legs, pausing occasionally to rub his stubble against her thighs. They didn’t get her all the way naked, but the only thing left is her skirt, rucked up around her hips. Brenda had started out by playing with her breasts while Fritz got busy down below, but now she’s so turned on she can only manage to clutch Sharon tight and nuzzle her hair. Meanwhile, Fritz’s dick stands up straight against his stomach and he doesn’t dare even rub against the sheets.   
  
How long have they wanted this, he and Brenda, to be so easily undone? How long has Sharon wanted this, already so on the edge that she’s about to--  
  
\-- _come right now_ against his mouth, arching up with one hoarse, desperate shout, gushing over his lips and chin with no warning. Then she sags backwards into Brenda’s arms.  
  
“Wow,” Brenda manages, peeking down at Fritz over Sharon’s head.   
  
“Oh,” Sharon says, shuddering with aftershocks. Fritz keeps going because she tastes good and every stroke nets him another quiver. “Oh, God. S-s-sometimes I, I do that, oh please--” Her thighs spasm. “P-please stop!”  
  
Too sensitive? He pulls back, wiping his mouth, and examines his handiwork. She’s pink and swollen and slick.   
  
And a redhead.  
  


* * *

  
Sharon is knuckle-deep into Brenda Leigh Johnson before she finally accepts that this is not a dream. But it takes Brenda’s first orgasm to convince her that they both want this as much as she does. By Brenda’s second orgasm--really, most people still underestimate the G-spot, and Sharon has extremely dextrous fingers--Fritz is so hard against Sharon’s ass that she can’t quite believe he’s still sane.   
  
“Oh my God,” Brenda whimpers against Sharon’s shoulder. “Oh, Sharon.”  
  
Sharon has wanted to hear those words, from that mouth, in exactly this tone, for a very, very long time. She never thought she actually would. She rubs her nose into Brenda’s hair and thinks about how wonderful her life is right now, how nearly perfect.   
  
“That was amazing,” Brenda adds, leaning back and wiping a blonde lock of hair from her sweaty forehead.   
  
“I’m glad,” Sharon says. She bends down and drops a respectful kiss on one of Brenda’s perfect nipples. “It’s been a while.” Longer than she cares to think about.   
  
Brenda gives her a lazy, knowing grin, as if she’s guessed. “Well, then, Fritzy,” she whispers, the satisfied husk in her voice making Sharon throb, “you’ll just have to take extra care, won’t you?”  
  
Fritz does not reply. Instead, he rests his forehead against Sharon’s shoulder. She can feel him shaking. And she throbs again, aching as if she hadn’t fallen apart beneath his mouth not so long ago.   
  
She doesn’t turn her head, but she lets her eyes close as she reaches behind herself, pats his naked thigh. His hips jerk. “Fritz,” she murmurs.  
  
“What,” he croaks.  
  
“You don’t have to be careful.”   
  
“Oh my goodness,” Brenda breathes, even as Fritz grabs Sharon’s hips, hoists her up, and Jesus Christ, he’s _in,_ all in, every magnificent inch of him, and she has to brace herself against the mattress to keep him from driving her face into it. She hears, dimly, Brenda murmuring encouragement, but dear God she can’t pay attention because he’s so hard, and hot, panting in her ear while he thrusts in and out as if they’re lovers who have been separated for a lifetime.   
  
She’s crying out at every thrust, her hands clutching the sheets until Brenda grabs one of them instead. It’s all that anchors Sharon to earth. It’s so good, oh God, she needs this so badly, a good hard fuck that turns her inside out. But then he pulls back, lifts her up higher, onto all fours--he can go deeper this way--and Brenda--  
  
Brenda has room to slip her hand beneath Sharon’s body and start rubbing between her legs, without finesse, or even being able to see what she’s doing. It doesn’t matter. Fritz is inside, and Brenda’s palm is rough and merciless, and for the first time in her life Sharon wonders if she’s actually going to be able to _stop_ coming. She can’t remember when she started. All she knows are the ecstatic spasms that wrack her, and she turns her face and rubs her mouth blindly against Brenda’s shoulder, her working arm. “More,” she sobs, “yes,” and, “oh God!”  
  
Then Fritz’s hips freeze, he groans, and his last few thrusts are harder and even faster as he releases inside her. Brenda’s stroking her hair, kissing her shoulder, and Sharon’s never felt anything like it before, never.  
  
Next thing she knows, she’s in a heap on the mattress, with Fritz curled up behind her, sweaty and hot as a kettle on boil, rubbing his face between her shoulder blades. Brenda kisses her again, but Sharon’s panting so hard that they aren’t proper kisses, just two overwhelmed people brushing their mouths together.   
  
“That was amazin’,” Brenda whispers, sliding her hand down Sharon’s side to where Fritz’s hand rests on her hip. And she and her husband hold hands against Sharon’s body while they kiss and pet her. All three of them cozy together.  
  
Sharon doesn’t know what to make of this, and for the moment, she doesn’t care. She sighs through her nose and floats in the bliss, too happy to be embarrassed about her...enthusiastic...performance. This will change soon, but for now, she’s just going with it. Eventually, she manages a soft hum. Brenda chuckles and kisses her cheek.  
  
“Coffee’s ready,” Fritz says, when he has his breath back.  
  


* * *

  
Brenda’s not sure why they all decide to wait to do it again.   
  
Maybe, she thinks, they just need a little time to process and come to a decision about What Happens Now. This is how she and Fritz arrive at that decision:  
  
On Saturday night, hours after Sharon has left, Fritz says, “You know, this morning, that was...wow.”  
  
“Yes, it was, it was,” Brenda agrees, looking up at Fritz from her Happy Family. “I’m glad we did it. I mean, I hadn’t really been thinking about it--” Fritz looks skeptical. “You know what I mean, I hadn’t ever seriously considered it.” Fritz looks more skeptical. “Well,” Brenda says in exasperation, “you and I never talked about it, anyhow.”  
  
“Nope.” Fritz raises his water glass. “Here’s to diving in headfirst.”   
  
Brenda manages a smile and raises her Merlot. “Here’s to that. So you don’t have any...regrets?”  
  
Fritz looks instantly wary. “No, actually, I don’t. And you? You said you were glad--”  
  
“I am,” Brenda assures him. “Oh, I really am. In fact...uh...”  
  
Fritz looks up at the ceiling for a moment, before lowering his head and giving Brenda his most serious look. The one he usually reserves for when he doesn’t want her to get shot. “How do you think she’s dealing with it?” he asks.  
  
Brenda licks her lips. “She seemed okay when she left.”  
  
“She seemed incredibly awkward when she left.”  
  
“She always seems like that!”  
  
“She’s never had sex with us before!”   
  
“Well, it’s not like we kicked her out,” Brenda says in a small voice. “We asked if she wanted to stay for lunch.” Since they’d worked through breakfast.  
  
“Yeah, that’s right. We did.”  
  
After a moment of silence, they look at each other and chorus, “We should call her.”  
  
But they wait until the next day, because they don’t want to seem desperate or pushy, and when Sharon answers the phone, Brenda takes the gold medal for awkward. “Hi Captain, I mean Sharon, Agent Fritz and I just thought I’d call to say hello, see how your weekend went...see if you were...so! What’ve you been up to?”  
  
Fritz rubs his eyes with both hands.  
  
Sharon says cautiously, “Not much. I did a little painting. A watercolor.”  
  
“Oh? You paint?” Brenda asks in the same tone she would use if Sharon revealed she’d built the Hubble Telescope.  
  
“Yes. I do,” Sharon says in a strained voice that tells Brenda she wants to get the hell off the phone already. “It relaxes me. And I spent last night and this morning going over FID paperwork.”  
  
“Oh, so you must need some more relaxin’, then,” Brenda says without thinking. Dead silence falls.  
  
Fritz lowers his head all the way to his knees.   
  
“Um--” Sharon begins.  
  
“I’m putting on the speakerphone now,” Brenda says brightly. “Fritz also wants to say hi.” If she’s so damned bad at this, maybe he can do better.  
  
“Good evening, Sharon,” Fritz says, raising his head again and speaking in such a natural, friendly tone that Brenda wants to smack him. Why didn’t he just make the call in the first place?  
  
“Hi, Fritz,” Sharon says, her voice still edgy. “How are you?”  
  
“Excellent,” he says. “Brenda and I are both excellent, actually. We had a great weekend. Did you?”  
  
Brenda holds her breath. After a second, Sharon says slowly, “Yes. Yes, I did. The best in a long time.”  
  
“Good,” Fritz says. “We are very, very glad about that.”  
  
“Art’s good for the soul,” Brenda mutters.  
  
“Um,” Sharon says again.  
  
“So, got any dinner plans for Tuesday?” Fritz asks.  
  
“Should I?” Sharon replies.  
  
On Tuesday, she shows up at seven o’clock with a dish covered in plastic wrap. The dish is a pie plate. The pie plate contains a chocolate peanut butter pie. Homemade. Still warm.  
  
“I used Valrhona--” Sharon begins while Brenda snatches the pie plate out of her hands and sets it down on whatever the nearest available surface is, then cups her face and plants a big one on her when she’s barely through the door.   
  
Sharon gasps when they part, and her glasses sit crookedly on her nose. Her lipstick no longer looks professionally applied. Brenda approves of this, and is about to see how much more she can get when Fritz wanders in from the living room, and says with a raised eyebrow, “Hi, Sharon.”  
  
“She made us a Reese’s pie!” Brenda says. “Just smell it, Fritzy!”   
  
Sharon sputters, “I made a _what?”_  
  
“Thanks,” Fritz says, giving Sharon a wry smile while he rubs the back of his neck. “You didn’t have to.”  
  
Sharon clears her throat and adjusts her glasses. “I hope you like it. I mean, I only really know what Brenda likes.”  
  
“The whole LAPD knows what Brenda likes.” Fritz approaches them, bends, and presses a light kiss to Sharon’s cheek. Sharon’s face flames, and she’s still standing so close that Brenda can feel her tremble.   
  
So much for awkward and shy. Why should they need awkward and shy? Not now that Brenda’s broken the ice so nicely and everything. She touches Sharon’s neck and says, “What’re you thinkin’ about, honey?”  
  
“Oh,” Sharon whispers, leans forward, and kisses her hard. Then she reaches up, cups the back of Fritz’s head, and rises on her tiptoes to his mouth.   
  
If you’d asked Brenda four months ago, before Goldman and Baylor and everything else that threatened to wreck her life--if you’d asked her how she’d feel about watching another woman kiss her husband, she’d have had a very pointed answer for you. But that was then, and this is now.   
  
This is Sharon, who spent hours with Brenda and Fritz going over testimonies and evidence, burning the midnight oil with them even after Gavin had checked out for the day. This is Sharon, who gave up a trip to the Bahamas with her family when Goldman tried to spring yet another nasty surprise on them. This is Sharon, who’s trying to keep one arm around Brenda’s shoulders even while the other is wrapped around Fritz’s neck, clinging to both of them like she can’t bear to let either of them go.   
  
Then she pulls back with a gasp, red as a beet and clearing her throat. “Ahem. Sorry,” she says.   
  
“How do three people have sex up against a door?” Brenda wonders, and then realizes she said it out loud and everything.   
  
Sharon doesn’t look like she can answer. Sharon looks like she’s just forgotten how to speak English. Fritz comes to the rescue and says hoarsely, “They might want to try it after dinner. And pie. Right, sweetheart?”  
  
“Right,” Brenda and Sharon chorus. Then Sharon looks like she’s about to turn around and flee back out the door as soon as she can figure out how to make her knees work. But Fritz and Brenda are both done with awkward, so Fritz pretty much pushes Sharon towards the kitchen table with his hand on the small of her back. Brenda starts cutting the pie before they’ve even opened the takeout containers.  
  
They talk about work, of course, but certain topics have to be avoided: Sharon’s current, confidential investigation. Brenda’s last interrogation which might have possibly bent a few tiny laws. The fact that Sharon and Brenda will likely collide again, no matter how much they’ve learned to trust each other and no matter how hot they are in the sack.   
  
Brenda is more than happy to keep the focus on Fritz’s job. Sharon picks at her food.   
  
Then Joel shows up and Fritz shoos him off the table, informing Sharon that they’re not the best cat disciplinarians, and Sharon says she always grew up with dogs, which carries them through the dessert. Everyone relaxes when the pie is served and it’s as delicious as it smells. Brenda inhales two slices and regrets not a single bite.  
  
But then dinner’s over and they all have to figure out what to do.  
  
The kitchen door now seems both impractical and uncomfortable. So now what? Head for the bedroom in single file? Undress each other or just themselves? Why didn’t she and Fritz talk about strategy beforehand? Does Brenda have to think of everything?  
  
“Fritzy,” she says, “I’ll clean up the dishes.” His jaw drops. Brenda continues, “Why don’t you show Sharon that artwork we just put up over the bed? Since she paints and all. I’ll be along in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”  
  
Fritz opens his mouth, until Sharon says, “Why, that sounds great,” in a tone of incredible relief. Brenda immediately turns to the sink and starts filling it with water to hide her triumphant grin. Their footsteps retreat.  
  
She wonders what it must have been like for Fritz to walk in on them Saturday morning, already warmed up for him and ready to go. Go fast, as it turned out, remembering how Sharon had practically taken off like a rocket.   
  
Brenda gulps and squirts Palmolive into the sink. How the hell long is this ‘washing’ thing supposed to take?  
  


* * *

  
Earlier, Sharon nearly killed herself trying to figure out what to wear. Work clothes are easy: don a classic, well-fitting suit. Add Manolo Blahniks. Stir. Date clothes are harder, and this isn’t a date. This is showing up somewhere specifically to have sex. There was no point, she’d decided, in jewelry, elaborate makeup, or fancy shoes.   
  
And she definitely doesn’t want to look like she’s trying too hard.   
  
So in the end she went with a casual wrap-dress that one could, theoretically, wear on a date, or running Saturday errands, or sex. It had also crossed her mind that neither Fritz nor Brenda has ever seen her in a dress like this before tonight. It’s very flattering. It makes the most of her breasts and hips.  
  
All Brenda had noticed was the pie. Fritz hadn’t said anything either. Maybe next time she’ll just show up in sweatpants.  
  
Next time. This is a dangerous thought to have.  
  
“So,” Fritz says. “The new artwork above our bed is an abstract print by some guy. We saw it in the window of an art gallery, liked the colors, and brought it home.” He sits on the edge of the mattress. “We’re real connoisseurs.”  
  
Sharon knows exactly who the artist is. She thinks about showing off. Then she thinks about straddling Fritz’s lap instead, and gets a very warm feeling in her stomach.   
  
Oh, God, it had been so long, until last weekend happened. And then it had been so good. And while she’s enjoyed both women and men, she’s never done anything this risque or daring--not in bed, never. A threesome. A menage a trois. And at her age.  
  
How much older is she than Brenda and Fritz? She doesn’t want to think about it. Instead, she stands in front of Fritz, places her hands on his shoulders, and raises her eyebrows in silent suggestion. Then she slowly lowers herself to his lap. He helpfully slides her skirt up her thighs so it doesn’t wrinkle, and she sighs.  
  
“I like your dress, by the way,” he says, and gives her a wry half-smile. “Should’ve said something before.”  
  
Sharon bites her lip. It used to be Brenda, all about Brenda--it was Brenda who tormented her, maddened her, made her curse to think that they were adversaries. Agent Howard was either an obstacle or a regrettable fact of life, depending on how feisty Sharon felt on any given day. But then Goldman had brought that damned federal case and they’d all three begun spending so much time together, and...  
  
Well, he noticed the dress. His smile is wonderful. He’s as solid as he looks. And very, very good with his mouth, as it turns out.  
  
“Thank you,” she says, and kisses--his forehead. Huh. She hadn’t meant to do that. It’s not particularly sexual, it’s unexpectedly tender, it’s maybe a little bit weird.   
  
He doesn’t seem to mind. Indeed, he smiles and rubs his knuckles over her breast, making her arch forward a little. “What do you wanna do tonight?” he whispers.  
  
That catches her up short a little. She gulps. Where to begin? There are many, many things she wants to do. To them. Last time, she was thoroughly done to, and it was delightful, but tonight Sharon Raydor intends to leave her mark. So to speak.   
  
She screws her courage to the sticking place, and is pleased with how steady and cool she sounds when she replies, “I want to use my mouth. On both of you.” Fritz’s breath catches. Sharon kisses him and murmurs, “One after the other, would you like that?”  
  
“Jesus,” he says, and ghosts his mouth over her collarbone. She shudders. “Yes. Hell yes, I would.”  
  
“Good,” Sharons says, tilting her head back and closing her eyes while he scrapes his teeth over her skin.   
  
“Lemme give you some pointers.”  
  
She opens her eyes again. “Huh?”  
  
“She likes it slow,” Fritz murmurs. “You want her screaming your name, you gotta take your time. Just push her legs open...get on your knees...”  
  
“Oh,” Sharon manages, already beginning to melt as he talks.   
  
“Just the smell of her is gonna make your mouth water. And you know what? I bet you won’t be able to go slow.” He slides his palms, hot and rough, up and down her bare thighs. “I bet you won’t be able to wait.”  
  
He bites her nipple through the dress.   
  
Sharon’s hips buck, he hisses, she groans, and he’s right. The minute she’s got Brenda Leigh against her mouth, she’s not going to be able to treat her like a lady. She’s waited too long, so long, and besides, if she spends all night eating Brenda out, she’ll have no strength left for him. That doesn’t seem fair.   
  
Just then, she feels hands untying the sash at her back. They’re not Fritz’s hands. “Oh,” she gasps.  
  
“Well, now,” Brenda says behind her, “whatever have y’all been getting up to?” The casual drawl would be perfectly convincing if not for the rasp that cuts it down the middle.  
  
Sharon turns her head just enough to get a look at Brenda’s flushed face and gleaming eyes. She tilts her head back for a soft kiss.   
  
“I’ve been getting instructions,” she says.   
  
“Oh?” Brenda asks, arching an eyebrow at a clearly unrepentant Fritz. “Think you can follow ‘em?”  
  
“Not in the least,” Sharon says.  
  
She’s right.   
  
By the end of the night, neither of them seems to mind, and Sharon can’t keep the gloating grin off her face as she wipes her mouth, smacks her lips, and moves her chin around, trying to loosen up her aching jaw. They hadn’t seen it coming, she knew. Neither of them had had a clue what she was capable of, what she had in store for them.   
  
The reverse, of course, is also true. Now that all is said and done, and they’re all three loose and heavy with exhaustion, she doesn’t quite know what to do. She glances at the bedside clock. It’s the middle of the night. Should she go home? She should probably go home. The marriage bed is, after all, traditionally used to hosting two people.  
  
“Stay a spell,” Brenda slurs, tugging her closer, but already half-asleep.   
  
Sharon hesitates.  
  
Then there’s a glass of water in front of her face. Fritz stands by the bed, still naked, offering it to her with a small, wry smile. “Stay as long as you like,” he says. “No need to rush. Bed’s plenty big.”  
  
“Ain’t the only thing,” Brenda mumbles, giving Fritz a woozy smile before dropping off to sleep completely. Fritz chuckles and gets into bed next to her, spooning up behind with the ease of long familiarity.   
  
Sharon takes a chance. (Another chance. It’s turning into a habit.) She edges in on the other side of Brenda, who wakes up just long enough to throw an arm across her stomach before going back to sleep.   
  
Fritz turns off the lamp and whispers, “Good night, Sharon.” Sharon licks her lips, still tasting them both in spite of the water.   
  
Sensible of the neighbors, and hostile to gossip and knowing looks, she slips out of their apartment at four in the morning while they both murmur polite, sleepy protests, but do not actually attempt to stop her. This is, she knows, for the best. Besides, she’ll be back.  
  


* * *

  
She is. Frequently. They have dinner or Saturday lunch, and touch one another, hold each other, kiss, rock, fuck, and soothe; and by the end of the fourth time, as they all lie together on the bed, they forget whose sweaty limbs are whose. It doesn’t seem to matter.  
  
Fritz and Brenda haven’t made love alone in all this time. When they realize this, they do, and it’s good, as good as it’s always been; but maybe--now--not quite good enough.   
  
This freaks them out just a little bit. Perhaps not as much as they might have expected, though. And when Sharon returns, it feels right enough to make all the rest go away.  
  
For a little while longer.  
  


* * *

  
Utopia can’t last forever, of course. In their case, it doesn’t last two months, which is as long as it takes for Provenza to shoot somebody, and thus start up a whole fol-de-rol that ends in Sharon learning all about how Brenda continues to be kind of...flexible in her methods, even after everything they’ve been through.  
  
Fritz has to give Sharon credit. She’ll beard the lion in its lair. Even when the lair is Brenda and Fritz’s own apartment. And she starts off sounding very calm and cool and reasonable. But the problem is that she isn’t calm and cool and reasonable, she’s madder than hell, and Brenda Leigh Johnson isn’t the sort of person who’ll help you keep that facade up for very long.   
  
So it’s not long before Sharon’s “I just think it’s important that we understand what’s at stake here” devolves into “Have you not been _paying attention_ to the last several months of your life, you cannot possibly be doing this _again!”_ And Brenda’s doing that thing where she puts her hands on her hips, and doesn’t meet Sharon’s eyes, and says the usual stuff about how she’s out there bringing criminals to justice, and some things are more important than following the rules, and if you’ll excuse her, she actually has this case right now she should be attending to.   
  
Then she turns around and stalks out of the room. This is the part where Fritz always throws his hands in the air because there’s no more dealing with her. Brenda works her own destruction, and sometimes there’s nothing to be done but pick up the pieces. He watches her leave the room and presses his lips together in a grimace, wondering what the fallout’s going to be this time.   
  
Sharon turns purple, heads after her, and proceeds to follow Brenda through the apartment like they’re playing the world’s most combative game of tag. She doesn’t stop talking the whole time. Fritz listens in astonishment. By the time they swing back through the kitchen, Brenda’s actually got her hands over her ears.  
  
“Don’t you know what could happen to you?” Sharon’s demanding, her voice rising into its upper, more unpleasant registers. “Don’t you care? Haven’t you learned to care by now?”  
  
“I’m not listening!” Brenda says, pressing her hands down harder over her ears and staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t have time for this! Fritzy, tell her I don’t have time for this--”  
  
“You’ll have plenty of time if you get fired, get sued, and _land in jail,”_ Sharon shouts. “For God’s sake.”   
  
Brenda reaches for her giant black bag, the one that has her phone and her car keys and everything else under the sun. Sharon snatches it before she can get there. Brenda’s eyes widen. “Give that back!”   
  
“There’s only so much I can do.” Sharon’s voice has a pleading note Fritz has never heard before. It does something to him, makes his heart hurt, and he hopes to God that Brenda hears it too. “I can only help you so much--don’t you get it? People are already talking, since before the hearing, even--they’re saying I’m willing to turn a blind eye when it comes to you. If you proceed like this...”  
  
“Who’s askin’ you to turn a blind eye?” Brenda snaps, putting her hands on her hips again. She tosses her head back. “Who’s askin’ you for anything? I’m not, _Captain._ I’m not asking you for anything at all. So you can take all this professional concern and shove it--”  
  
“Brenda!” Fritz says, with enough force behind it that Brenda stops in her tracks and looks at him with wide eyes. But the damage has been done. Sharon drops Brenda’s bag, grabs her own, and barrels out of the kitchen without another word.  
  
Brenda and Fritz stand frozen until the front door slams.   
  
Fritz searches for the words. He can’t find them. He’s too angry--he doesn’t trust himself not to start shouting, too. God help him, this is one of those times he wants a drink so badly it makes his teeth hurt. Just once, would it fucking kill Brenda to--  
  
“Oh,” Brenda whispers, hiding her face in her hands, “what have I done, what did I do, why did I say all that, damn it why didn’t you stop me?” Then she pelts past Fritz to the front door, her bare feet thumping while he stares after her.   
  
A few minutes later, she comes back with her shoulders slumped. “She already drove off,” she mutters.   
  
“Shocking,” Fritz says, his anger slightly defused by Brenda’s immediate remorse. “First of all, I did stop you. Second, why didn’t you stop yourself? Everything she said is true. You know that.”  
  
“I do,” Brenda says, sounding near to tears. “I do know that. Oh, and after everything she’s done for us. Where’s my phone?” She grabs her bag from where Sharon dumped it on the counter. “Lemme call her.”   
  
Fritz remembers the look on Sharon’s face when she fled--furious and broken--and says, “She might not want to talk right now.”   
  
“But she might!” Brenda glares at the display and presses buttons at random. “Oh, where’s my danged contact list--there it is.” She pushes another button, takes a deep, shaky breath, and presses the phone to her ear.   
  
A few seconds later, she closes her eyes and growls, “Right to voicemail.”  
  
“Give her some time,” Fritz says. “Let her cool down. We all should,” he adds pointedly.  
  
“Oh, Fritzy,” Brenda says, and wraps her arms around him. “I feel so awful.”  
  
“You should,” Fritz says, but he pats her shoulder. “It’ll blow over.”  
  
“You think so?” Brenda squeezes him tighter before stepping back. “I just got so mad. Ooh, that woman! It’s always one step forward, two steps back--”  
  
“Like a dance,” Fritz says, looking her in the eye. “All this time and she hasn’t left the ballroom yet. Just calm down. Where’s that case you were working on?”  
  
“Oh!” Brenda says. “I will just _kill_ Lieutenant Provenza! I will--you know what he’s gonna do? He’s gonna file that report. He’s going to stay up until the wee hours of the morning gettin’ us out of this hole he’s dug us into, and he is gonna march it right down to FID himself--”  
  
“I’ll, uh, leave you to it,” says Fritz, and decorously leaves the kitchen while Brenda fumbles again with her speed-dial. On the way out, he palms his own phone from the table, and slips out the front door as quietly as possible, knowing she’s no longer paying him the least heed.   
  
Sharon picks up on the fourth ring with a terse “Yes?”  
  
“She’s sorry,” Fritz sighs. “That’s what she was calling you to say. She felt bad as soon as you’d left.”  
  
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Sharon says.   
  
“Look,” Fritz says, rubbing his forehead, “do you know what she’s doing right now? Tearing Provenza a new one even as we speak. She admitted straight up to me that you were right.”  
  
“So what?” Sharon asks in a shaking voice. “I don’t know if you were listening, but the things she said sound exactly like the things she’d have said to me a year ago--even now, after--you know what? It’s always one--”  
  
“One step forward, two steps back?”  
  
“Well, yes,” Sharon says, sounding surprised. “That’s exactly what I was about to say.”  
  
“You scared her,” Fritz says. “You pushed her.”  
  
“She ought to be scared! She needs to be pushed!”  
  
“Yes,” Fritz says patiently. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not so good at that. I tend to...” This was going to sound so bad. “...give up sometimes. When I just feel like I’m just beating my head against a wall.”  
  
“And if we’d given up on her during Goldman’s case?” Sharon asks. “Just let her go her own way, no lawyer, no defense--”  
  
“Sharon. I’m agreeing with you here.”  
  
“Oh,” Sharon says. There is silence for a moment.   
  
“Once she’s done devouring Provenza, I’ll calm her down some more,” Fritz says. “A big glass of Merlot.” Sharon’s laugh sounds like a hiccup. “She’ll call you again after that. Will you pick up?”  
  
After another moment, Sharon sighs and says, “Of course I will.”  
  
His head drops forward in relief. “Thank you.”  
  
“You can calm her down,” Sharon says. “I can’t. I never could. No matter what I tried, it only ever wound her up worse. Even when I was very polite.”  
  
This is probably because what Sharon calls ‘politeness’ other people call ‘withering condescension.’ Fritz can only imagine how well a wound-up Brenda must respond to Sharon being ‘polite.’ “Well,” he hedges, “we all have, uh, our own approaches.”  
  
“Right. So you’ll--calm her down. And I’ll...”  
  
“Give a swift kick to her gorgeous ass,” Fritz helpfully supplies.   
  
Another rough laugh. “Damn her, it is gorgeous, isn’t it?”  
  
“It is,” Fritz says with a grin. “So’s yours. Can’t we all just get along?”  
  
“With the benefits of teamwork,” Sharon says, “I suppose.” The slight, breathless hitch is gone from her voice. But she still sounds a little hesitant when she adds, “So...she’ll call me.”  
  
“She will call you,” Fritz confirms. “And--just so we’re all clear on this--I will tell her that I called you too. We’ll keep everything nice and transparent.”  
  
“Just as it should be,” says Sharon, whose professional life depends on transparency and almost never involves niceness. They hang up. Good teamwork, Fritz thinks. Good hustle.  
  
That night, when Fritz is watching football, Brenda comes into the room, holding her phone with a relieved smile. He knows then that Sharon will be back. He knows then that he, too, had doubted.   
  
But she comes back the very next night, and everyone apologizes to everyone else. They don’t say much, though. And it takes a long, delightful time.  
  


* * *

Five months later, they’re all in love with each other. This ought to make matters easier. It doesn’t. Sharon does not feel entitled to stay at Brenda and Fritz’s if she isn’t providing sex, so on nights when she’s exhausted from work, she goes to her own condo with her own clothes and her own furniture. Then she is horribly lonely until she falls asleep. Miles away, Fritz and Brenda try to fill up the bed with only two people and they can’t.   
  
In the morning, Fritz will call Sharon and say, “Missed you last night, hope everything’s okay.” Or Brenda will corner her alone in the office somewhere and say, “Hey, when you stoppin’ by again?” Or Sharon will send a discreetly-worded email to them both (never from her work account and never to theirs) asking if tonight is convenient. Sometimes it’s not--Fritz or Brenda will be working late or out of town, and more time goes down the drain, never to return.  
  
If more than a week passes by like this, when they all finally get together, it’s rough-and-tumble. Especially on Sharon, because in the interim, at least Brenda and Fritz have had each other. But they’ve missed her, so they take her until they wreck her, trying to make up for lost opportunities. By the time they’re done, Sharon, moaning and half-dead, with Fritz rubbing her side and Brenda kissing her neck, inevitably decides that nothing on earth will keep her away from this again. Until the next time.  
  
How did they get into such a mess?  
  


* * *

  
Eventually, Sharon’s best friend finds out. She should have known he would. He’s got a way of looking straight through everybody’s bullshit--it’s why he’s one of the top attorneys in L.A. It’s why she trusted him with Brenda.  
  
“Darling,” Gavin says, “I know we both have a hard-on for Tilda Swinton, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery--”  
  
“Gavin--”  
  
“--but surely there’s an easier way than an emotionally fraught threesome? I mean, can’t you just wipe off your makeup, throw on a beige toga, and walk around on some red carpets?”  
  
“Tilda seems to be happy enough,” Sharon mutters, rubbing her forehead and thinking about hanging up on him. “And so am I. How did you even find out about this?” And oh God, is he the only one?  
  
“Remember intermission at _Zauberflote_ last week?”  
  
“Uh--”  
  
“And you asked me to hold on to your phone for a second while you went to the ladies’?”  
  
“Oh--”  
  
“And you got a text?”  
  
“Gavin!”  
  
“What? It was from ‘Chief Johnson,’ not ‘Secret Lover Number One,’ and I thought, oh, my favorite former client, and it’s obviously a work thing so Sharon won’t mind--”  
  
“Sharon does mind!” Sharon screeches. “Sharon minds very, very much!”  
  
“And what else did it say but, ‘Fritzy says you should come over here if opera’s too boring and have some real fun.’ I assumed she wasn’t talking about Scrabble.”  
  
Sharon closes her eyes in horror. She’d torn into them both for sending such a blatant message. And she’d been so very relieved that nobody else had seen it. Certainly Gavin had given nothing away when he’d returned her phone. Goddamn it.   
  
“‘Fritzy,’ darling? Really?” he adds.  
  
“Really,” Sharon says, remembering how much she loves the smell of Fritz’s aftershave, and also the fact that he cleans up after himself in the bathroom.   
  
“I suppose he’s hot enough,” Gavin concedes, sounding reluctant. “And of course I find her fabulous in every way--just tell me she doesn’t go by ‘Bren Bren’ or something.”  
  
“No, she doesn’t,” says Sharon, whom Fritz occasionally calls ‘Red.’ Then she thinks about how Brenda’s nightwear is either fabulously provocative or totally ridiculous, depending on whether she puts it on before or after sex.   
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gavin asks.  
  
“I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t been planning to.” Not for the first time, Sharon feels a deep, cold shudder of dread when she thinks of Naomi and Brandon, and of her parents. “Why on earth would I?”  
  
“So--” It’s always a bad sign when Gavin sounds uncertain. “It’s not serious, then. It’s just physical or whatever.”   
  
Sharon bites her lip. Joel has taken to sleeping on her legs. Sometimes she wakes up to numb feet.   
  
“But I’ve never known you to do ‘just physical,’ that’s the thing,” Gavin continues. “Are you becoming sexually liberated at last? It’s just that I’m thinking you might have chosen better people to experiment with.”  
  
There are no better people anywhere in the world to wake up next to, and there is no more desolate feeling than sneaking out of their home before the neighbors stir, and driving back to her own place where all the lights are off. She hasn’t spent the night, not the whole night, since that first Saturday morning.   
  
“Gavin, I trust you,” she says, “but this subject is--I can’t talk about this at all. I just can’t.”  
  
“ _Soll die Empfindung Liebe sein?_ ” Gavin sings. Of course he’s memorized his favorite arias, and he knows Sharon doesn’t speak German.   
  
Brenda does, fluently. Does Fritz as well? “Oh, shut up,” Sharon says. “Talk to me about--about--” Something that used to matter. “Armani.”  
  
“Armani hasn’t been relevant for years. Ask Anna Wintour,” he says. “And buy some fresh suits.”   
  


* * *

  
They’ve been (together? a group? doing this?) for eight months when Fritz hits a wall. Not literally; he is not a violent man. He poured that down the drain with the last of the booze long ago.   
  
An old friend dies in a car accident. They’d known each other since they were in middle school, and both ended up in California. He and his wife sent a Christmas card every year, and whenever Doug was near L.A., he’d swing by and meet Fritz for lunch or something. They talked on the phone. Brenda likes him. Liked him. Fritz told her once that Doug was one of the least judgmental people he’d ever known, always willing to lend an ear, even when Fritz was at rock bottom and unsure how to change.   
  
He’s gone now. So’s his wife. So’s his daughter. One Mack truck and missed red light (“he could be a careless son of a bitch, oh my God”), and the Doug Myerson family is wiped off the face of the earth.   
  
Fritz goes up to San Jose for the funeral. Brenda’s too busy to accompany him, of course. She is sure he understands--she’s upset, she’s sad for him, of course she is. She just can’t make the time right now.   
  
They don’t tell Sharon. He’s only going to be gone for one night, and besides, things aren’t all they could be right now on that front. A week ago, before Fritz got the news, FID and Major Crimes collided again; perhaps mindful of the last debacle, or of her own lack of objectivity, Sharon rides everyone harder than ever. More than is necessary. Her own squad is surprised, especially because Major Crimes is trying harder than ever to cooperate, for reasons that Brenda prays aren’t obvious. Even Fritz has to admit that Sharon’s being kind of an asshole about it.   
  
So there have been no amorous visits to the Johnson-Howard household lately. Enough to set both Brenda and Fritz on edge as they worry whether or not there will be any more, ever. The last time Brenda managed to corner her, Sharon started babbling about the separation of work and feelings and other irrelevant nonsense, and she couldn’t quite look Brenda in the eye. It made Brenda’s heart ache--it made everything ache--and she could probably have been more sensitive in her response.  
  
But she wasn’t, so it’s been a few days since she’s even looked at Sharon now. The apartment is very lonely when Fritz is gone, and Sharon isn’t talking to her, so Brenda spends almost all night in the murder room by herself instead. It’s easy to forget everything else there.  
  
In fact, when she gets home the next night, in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes, it’s almost a surprise to find Fritz there. He’s sitting on the sofa and looking at the TV. The only problem is, the TV is off. A half-empty bottle of water sits on his knee. Joel is perched on the top of the fridge, viewing the whole scene from a wary distance.  
  
He doesn’t turn his head when she comes in, even though she deliberately makes noise.  
  
“Hey, honey,” she tries. “How was the funeral?”  
  
He looks over his shoulder, and she holds her breath at the desolation in his face.   
  
“Oh,” she gulps. “I’ll--we’ll talk about it in a second, okay? Just a second? Let me just, just get a shower and I’ll be back as soon as...”  
  
His gaze slides away as if he didn’t hear. Brenda’s texting Sharon before she even gets to their bedroom. _Fritz needs help please call me._  
  
She doesn’t get in the shower. Instead she changes her clothes, glancing at her phone every two seconds. Three minutes feels like an eternity, which is how long it takes for the screen to light up. She’s turned the sound off.  
  
“Sharon?” she whispers.  
  
“Brenda? What’s going on? Is he okay?”  
  
“No. He’s--I mean, he’s not hurt or anything. One of his friends died. He just got back from the funeral. He’s takin’ it hard.”  
  
“...oh,” Sharon says. She hesitates, and then adds, “What can I do? How can I help?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Brenda makes sure to keep her voice low. She sits on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what to say to him, I don’t know what to tell him. I...I didn’t even really know how close they were.” She’d never asked. She wasn’t ready for this.   
  
“Does he want to talk about it?”  
  
“He’s just staring off into space. I’m--” Brenda realizes she is near to tears.   
  
Where is Fritz? Off in his own world of sorrow. Where is Sharon? Miles away and still mad at her. And Brenda knows exactly what to say to murderers, but she can’t comfort a grieving husband, the man she loves most in the world.   
  
“Can I come over?” Sharon asks.  
  
Brenda swallows. Not _Do you want me to come over?_ , which is what most people would have said. They are past that. Brenda does not have to be CIA-trained to hear the longing in Sharon’s voice.  
  
“You can always come over,” she says, closing her eyes and feeling a tear slide down her cheek. “You don’t need to ask.” They should have given her a key long ago, really--when this is over and done with, Brenda will try to remember--  
  
“Should I bring anything?”  
  
Brenda imagines Sharon bringing a casserole covered in foil, as if she were Southern born and raised. She hiccups, which is close to laughter. “Just yourself. Soon as you can.”  
  
“I’m on my way.”   
  
She doesn’t bring a casserole, but when Brenda opens the door at her knock, she sees that Sharon stopped by the Cuban place and got take-out. The jerk chicken smells heavenly.   
  
“Where is--?” Sharon whispers as she sets the bag down on the kitchen table.  
  
“Still in the living room.” Where he continued to sit for the last thirty minutes while Brenda fluttered around, trying to clear up little messes here and there. Mindful of Sharon’s question about whether or not he even wanted to talk, she’d sat next to him for a bit, waiting to see if he was going to say anything. He didn’t, although he reached out to pat her knee.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“It was one of his best friends. Knew him since they were kids. A car accident. His whole family was killed.”  
  
“Oh my God.”  
  
“Yeah.” Brenda bites her lip. Sharon’s eyes are dark and her mouth is tight with concern. She doesn’t even look like the same person who got all snitty about her job a week ago.  
  
“Oh, come here,” Brenda growls, and throws her arms around the woman who makes her crazy. Sharon comes willingly into the embrace. Brenda can feel how hard her heart is beating. “We missed you,” she whispers.   
  
“And I--” Sharon sounds strangled. “Me too. I missed--I mean, I can’t apologize for maintaining professional standards--”   
  
Brenda releases her. “Oh, for heaven’s--”  
  
“But I missed you!” Sharon finishes, her voice high pitched and her eyes bright and wet behind her glasses.  
  
Brenda holds her hand on the way back into the living room. They stand in front of the sofa, looming over Fritz in a united front.  
  
Finally, it’s enough to make him look up with a wry, resigned smile. His own eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “Hey,” he says.  
  
“I heard. I’m sorry,” Sharon says.   
  
Fritz shrugs, his voice hoarse when he says, “Nothing to be done. It’s a goddamn mess and there’s nothing to be done.”  
  
Brenda and Sharon meet each other’s eyes. Brenda nods and they sit down on the sofa to either side of Fritz. Sharon takes his hand. Brenda rubs his back.   
  
“His mom was there, of course,” Fritz says. He gives a short, bitter laugh. “She always hated me. I got him in a lot of trouble when we were in high school and she was always an uptight--” He swallows hard. “She asked if I still drank all the time.”  
  
“Oh!” Brenda gasps. Sharon presses her lips together. Brenda realizes they’ve never talked about Fritz’s struggles with alcohol, but Sharon’s no fool: she must have noticed that Fritz never shares in the bottle of Merlot or meets his friends after work at the bar.   
  
“She was hurting,” Fritz continues. “A lot. I get it. He was her only kid, Marissa was her only grandchild. God, I’m going to miss him.”  
  
“Brenda said you knew him when you were a boy?” Sharon asks, squeezing his hand.  
  
“Yeah. I guess we were--” Fritz’s eyes go far away again. “Twelve, thirteen, something like that. He looked up to me. First drink I ever had was with...” He closes his eyes. “When I realized. When I told him it was a problem. He said we’d never go to a bar again, he said, ‘We’ll learn to fish or some shit’.” He rubs a hand over his mouth, and mumbles behind it, “We never did. Just as well. He turned vegetarian.”  
  
“Oh, Fritzy,” Brenda says, and rests her head on his shoulder.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sharon repeats. Looking up, Brenda can see that Sharon feels nearly as helpless as she does, and now she is amused--sort of--at her assumption that Sharon would somehow become The Fritz Whisperer, easily able to translate Brenda’s love and sympathy into words.   
  
“It’s okay,” Fritz says. He sighs heavily. “Thanks for coming. I’m...really glad you’re both here.”   
  
He leans back on the sofa and they both curl up against him, arms crossing over his chest until they are all a tangle again, except with their clothes on this time. It is very warm. Fritz’s breathing is growing steadier.  
  
“Four years ago, my college roommate died,” Sharon murmurs. “A stroke. She was healthy as a horse. A fitness nut. I couldn’t believe it.” It’s her turn to sigh. “We only spoke a few times a year, if that. But she just wasn’t there all of a sudden. It made no sense.”  
  
“Yeah,” Fritz says quietly. “Exactly.”  
  
Brenda can’t relate. She doesn’t have any friends, unless you count her own officers and the two people sitting on this sofa. She can’t even remember the name of the girl she roomed with during her freshman year at Georgetown.  
  
But she deals with murder nearly every day, so she can say with perfect certainty, “Death never makes sense. Most you can do is live as best you can.”  
  
It is probably the most philosophical thing she’s ever said. Fritz and Sharon both smile, as if to indicate this is not lost on either of them.   
  
Sharon sits up, then leans in to kiss Fritz gently on the mouth, cupping his cheek. The evening unfolds slowly from there, moving gradually from the sofa to the bedroom. They never make it to the kitchen, and Sharon’s Cuban takeout goes cold.  
  
They don’t have sex, exactly, although Brenda would call it making love. There is lots of kissing and stroking, the occasional murmur. She isn’t sure when it begins, and it never really seems to end, either. She drifts off to sleep at about midnight, still snuggled against one side of Fritz, who is rubbing his hand up and down her back.  
  
She wakes up at four, though, when Sharon leaves. Brenda watches her go through lowered eyelids, because Sharon doesn’t like goodbyes. Brenda yearns to stop her. She just wants a few more hours, and maybe that will be enough to erase last week’s coldness, all that lonely time that’s left extra tracks around Sharon’s eyes.   
  
Instead, she watches Sharon go, and the quiet shutting of the door makes her heart ache some more. Something, she knows, has got to give. Somebody’s got to push. Probably.  
  
Or not. Maybe if she waits long enough, everything will just fix itself. That would be nice.  
  


* * *

  
In mid-October, Sharon Raydor is nearly killed in the line of duty, cleaning up after a Narcotics bust gone wrong. When they hear about it, Flynn texting at eleven p.m. with the news, Brenda and Fritz don’t even know what to say. It’s not supposed to happen to her. Because after all, Brenda works in Major Crimes where people always have something to hide. Fritz is an FBI agent. They bust down doors and break into houses. But Sharon? Sharon shows up when all is said and done, when cops’ guns have been fired and the criminals are either incapacitated or have fled the scene. Who would be dumb enough to come back to a taped-off area crawling with police officers and open fire?  
  
It only takes one.  
  
In fact, he’s aiming right at her. The captain, the officer in charge. He watches her through a window, aims at her head, and fires. At the last second, she bends over to look at some blood spatters on the ground, and the officer standing next to her goes down with a bullet in his skull. Sharon drops to her knees, raising her weapon and tilting her head just in time to feel something hot and sharp graze her cheek with surprising force. She realizes it’s a second bullet just in time for one of her officers to grab her and drag her behind the nearest car while the firefight ensues.  
  
It’s over almost instantly--her people fire straight at the windows and the idiot falls dead. Sharon should want him for questioning, but she can’t bring herself to regret his death at all when she can see Sergeant St. John lying on the pavement with blood pooling beneath his temple. She staggers out from behind the car while officers scatter to make sure nobody else is hiding and waiting to make trouble. Then she gathers her lieutenants and starts issuing orders, feeling almost as if she is dreaming.   
  
“Captain,” Lieutenant Grissom says urgently, “the ambulance is here.”  
  
“Good,” Sharon says. “Let’s get Detective St. John decently out of here.” She’s known him for five years. She knows how he likes his coffee and that he’s got one child, who’s off at college.   
  
“Yes, Captain,” Grissom says, “but we also need to look at your cheek. It’s...”  
  
It’s on fire, Sharon realizes, and has to fight to keep from touching the wound. She is forced to go to the hospital where they clean her cheek, disinfect it, stitch it up, and wrap a bandage around her head like a nun’s wimple to keep everything in place. She feels completely ridiculous. She insists on returning to her office in the middle of the night, figuring that she needs to get the paperwork done, and she needs to do it before she loses her fucking mind. Which she will certainly do if she goes back to her empty house.  
  
There are still a few people hanging around at the station, watching her as she stalks through the halls. She gets more than a few astonished looks, but very few sympathetic ones. She knows they’re thinking, finally, somebody took a shot at her. Good thing she didn’t die, they’re saying, of course it’s good, but maybe it’ll teach Little Miss FID a lesson about what the front lines are really like...  
  
At two in the morning, she leaves her desk and heads into the ladies’ room, so tired she is nearly swaying in place. Her ears are still ringing from the shots. Everything sounds muffled and far away. In the mirror, all her wrinkles stand out in sharp relief, but she spends more time staring at the bandage.  
  
There will probably always be a mark. She was unbelievably fortunate. This sort of luck comes once in a lifetime, she thinks, it never strikes twice in the same place.  
  
But when Fritz Howard shows up at Internal Affairs at three-thirty in the morning to drag her away, down empty, silent hallways towards his waiting car, Sharon wonders if maybe she can get kind of close to it again.  
  


* * *

  
Of course Brenda doesn’t fall apart when she sees the bandage wrapped all the way around Sharon’s face, because in her time, with all she’s experienced...and Sharon would hate it, anyway. It’s fairly easy to limit herself to an embrace, a heartfelt “Oh, honey,” and a firm arm around Sharon’s waist when they get her comfortably into bed. Now that she’s left the station, she’s willing to take her sedating painkillers, and she’s so exhausted and wrung dry that she falls asleep nearly at once. Brenda is not surprised when she whimpers in nightmare.  
  
This is not exactly how she planned to get Sharon to spend the night. Then again, it’s already four in the morning--the hour Sharon usually creeps home. So it doesn’t really count.  
  
“Think one of her officers has ever died before?” Fritz asks from behind, where he’s spooning Brenda.   
  
“I don’t know. She’s never mentioned it. Probably not--it’s not the most high-risk department.” Not physically, anyway. In Internal Affairs, you always ran the risk of pissing off the wrong person. Sharon’s dodged that bullet so far.  
  
And this one too. Brenda doesn’t touch the bandage. “One of the closest calls I’ve ever seen,” she says. Then she shudders. Oh, mercy. So damned close.  
  
“I love her, too,” Fritz says quietly. “I love you both.”  
  
Brenda closes her eyes and presses her lips together. She feels the tension in his arms, and this time she hears what he doesn’t say: he can’t take another loss.   
  
Brenda can’t stop herself from imagining it either. If Sharon had died--if she could never come back to this bed or their lives--  
  
“Me too,” is all she says.  
  
“It was bad enough when I had to worry about losing you.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So now what?”  
  
It feels strange to have this conversation while Sharon is so thoroughly conked out and can’t offer her input, but Brenda still lets go of her and rolls over on her back so she and Fritz can face each other. She rubs his shoulder. “Now what, what?”  
  
Fritz sighs. “We’ve gotta work this out. She can’t just keep stopping by to get laid. It’s not good enough for any of us.”  
  
Brenda hates, hates, hates talking about stuff like this. She sucks it up and says, “Well, what’re we supposed to do? Get her to move in? Invite her kids over for dinner, explain we’ve taken in a roommate when Momma and Daddy come to visit?”  
  
“Maybe we’ve fallen on hard economic times and need to sublet to make ends meet.”  
  
“So she’s rentin’ a third of our bedroom.”  
  
Fritz grunts in amusement. “We’d need to find a bigger place, too, so that’s out the window.”  
  
“Yeah. A closet just for her Manolos.” Brenda stretches. “You’re right, though. I just don’t know what to do, that’s all, I don’t know what’s fair or safe.”  
  
“Fair and safe are incompatible in this situation.”  
  
Right. ‘Fair’ means Sharon’s not the dirty little secret. ‘Safe’ means that she is. It’s not just about family and friends, it’s their jobs too, it’s everything that matters to all three of them.  
  
“We need to ask her,” Brenda says. “We can’t just wait till she wakes up and tell her what we’ve decided, now can we?”  
  
“I guess not.” Fritz regards Brenda seriously. “That’s the first thing we’ve gotta do differently.”  
  
He’s right, of course. Even if they all love each other, even if Sharon will admit to that, she’s still the third wheel and always has been. What will it be like to change that, until they’re finally all in this together, and she’s not just someone who can leave at the first sign of trouble?  
  
It’s oddly easy for Brenda to say, “I am scared as all-get-out.”  
  


* * *

  
Together, they decide not to drop any anvils on Sharon until the horror of the shooting has lifted and she’s dealing better with the death of St. John, his bereaved family, and the logistical nightmare that is FID investigating itself. She’s had to bring in neutral parties from the outside, which she hates, and eventually admits that she now understands how Brenda must have felt when Sharon first began interfering in her department. Fritz is very proud of Brenda for reining in her satisfaction.  
  
It’s around Halloween when they tell the Wicked Witch that it’s time to have a little talk.  
  
“Come out?” Sharon says at their kitchen table, clutching her coffee mug in a white-knuckled hand. “Is that what you want? Are you nuts?”  
  
That answers that question, Fritz thinks with some relief, but it’s Brenda who takes Sharon’s hand and says, “Oh, no. That’s not what we’re saying--just that--”  
  
“Just _what?”_  
  
“Well, it’d be nice to spend more time together,” Brenda says helplessly. Fritz tries not to feel resentful. That’s the sort of thing that Brenda used to say to him all the time, right before giving a list of excuses for why she was getting home late every night. Now she sounds completely sincere.  
  
Then again, she never said it when he’d almost gotten his head blown off, either. Sharon’s always going to have that scar on her cheek. He told her a few days ago that it makes her look like a badass, but she still tries to hide it with makeup.  
  
“Maybe you could just stay over more,” he says now, not adding ‘even without sex.’ “Not duck out so early in the mornings. Maybe we could all three go out to dinner somewhere fancy. We don’t have to do anything drastic.”   
  
“Oh, dinner!” Brenda says, nodding too hard. “Just dinner, wouldn’t that be nice? I think that sounds nice. And you know about all those trendy French and sushi places and whatnot.”  
  
Sharon licks her lips. Her hands are shaking. Beneath the table, so are Fritz’s. “I do,” she says slowly. “We...I guess we could do that. Dinner? It wouldn’t look too weird. If we don’t do it often.”  
  
It won’t look weird, but it will be weird, Fritz knows. They’ll all be awkward and nervous, stilted, they’ll only talk about work, and it won’t be like eating at home at all. Sharon’s not going to show up with some dessert that’s both homemade and edible, Brenda’s not going to mumble around mouthfuls of takeout chow mein, and Fritz isn’t going to sit back and listen to them and bask in how happy he is.  
  
Two beautiful, smart, sexy women at once: he’s been living the dream. Can they all survive waking up?   
  
“Baby steps,” he says. “It might never be more than that. It’s just--it’s not right.”  
  
“What isn’t?” Sharon asks.  
  
Fritz glances at Brenda, who says, “You bein’ the secret, that’s what.”  
  
“I’d rather be a secret than--a lot of probable alternatives.” Sharon glances away. Her throat works. Fritz waits breathlessly for whatever’s coming, which is--  
  
“I can’t imagine living without you,” Sharon says quietly, looking at the wall beyond Fritz’s shoulder. “I want you both to understand that. I also need to say that it was--alarmingly--easy for me to live through these last few months with my eyes closed and pretend that nothing has to be compromised...but...” She puts her hands on the table and wrings them, still not looking at either Fritz or Brenda.  
  
“What are you saying?” Brenda asks, her voice hoarse and apprehensive. “Look at me.”  
  
Sharon looks, her face too pale. “Just the truth. I won’t give you up--I won’t go until something makes me--but we have to be realistic. And if you ever think that we are all going to be able to walk through the LAPD holding hands, you are living in a dream world.”  
  
Fritz half expects Brenda to blow her stack, but she doesn’t. She just says, “Maybe so. But here we are.” She spreads her hands open, palms up.   
  
“Here we are,” Sharon agrees. “How did that happen, again?”  
  
Fritz sighs. “It seemed like a good idea at the time?” he suggests.  
  
“It is a good idea,” Brenda insists, scowling at them both as if they are being difficult. “It is. There’s no reason to go borrowing trouble, that’s what my mother always says.”  
  
Sharon gets an arrested, almost dazed expression on her face. Fritz is certain he does as well, while they both try to picture Willie Rae counseling them through this particular crisis.  
  
“Anyway!” Brenda says, putting on her brightest smile, and drumming her palms against the table so as to indicate she’d like to stop talking about this, thanks very much. “It’s just something we can be thinkin’ about. Dinner. Maybe this weekend? Friday night? If nothin’ comes up.” If nobody’s murdered. “Sharon, you’ll think of a place?”  
  
“Sure,” Sharon says weakly.   
  
Brenda beams. Fritz raises an eyebrow and asks, “Any other instructions, honey?”  
  
Now Brenda looks thoughtful. Fritz feels a hot lurch of anticipation in his stomach as she says, “Well, as a matter of fact,” and he knows he and Sharon are both in for it tonight.  
  


* * *

  
This can’t be real, Sharon thinks, as her blouse lands at her feet halfway to the bedroom. They can’t truly have had that conversation. Her lovers cannot really have invited her to stay the night before asking her out to dinner; she cannot actually have accepted. She certainly cannot have admitted to them how she feels.   
  
Well, she held back a little. She didn’t say she loves them both so much it’s keeping her up at night, making her crazy, giving her the shakes like an addict. No, she didn’t say that, but maybe someday soon, she will.   
  
They make it to the bed. Sharon knows exactly what she wants. Without asking permission (because she shouldn’t have to, because both of them are hers), she sits on the edge of the mattress and reaches for Fritz’s fly.  
  
“Ooh,” Brenda coos, because she loves watching this. They were all three surprised to learn how much it turns her on, but by the time Fritz’s pants and underwear are on the floor, she is panting; and by the time Sharon is licking him, tiny darts of her tongue, she’s got her hand between her own thighs while she watches.  
  
Fritz strokes his hands through Sharon’s hair. “That’s good, Red,” he breathes, “oh, that’s so good.” His hips begin to rock gently; she laves her tongue over the crown. Then she opens her mouth and invites him in, steadying him with her hand while she sucks. To the side, she hears Brenda gulp, but it’s the other noise--the sound of Brenda’s fingers moving over wet flesh and sticky curls--that makes her sweat.   
  
She stops just long enough to reach behind herself and unhook her bra, tossing it over the side of the bed before she leans forward and kisses Fritz’s stomach, rubbing his cock between her breasts. He gasps. Once, he came all over her this way, and the look on his face had aroused both Sharon and Brenda so much that they hadn’t even spared the time to touch one another, had gotten themselves off in two seconds flat, almost like it was a competition to see who could fuck herself harder.   
  
Then Brenda had licked her clean. Jesus. Sometimes Sharon thinks that there’s nothing she won’t do with them, or let them do to her. Other times, she knows it for certain.  
  
She doesn’t want that this time, though, and she doesn’t think they do, either. After their talk at the table, something more intimate, more personal seems called for. She gives Fritz’s cock another lingering, tender kiss--he hisses--before she turns over to Brenda, who’s got two fingers in herself and is nearly cross-eyed.   
  
“I’ll hold you,” Sharon whispers.  
  
And the night continues just as this odd arrangement began: Brenda in the middle, drawing all three of them together. Sharon cradles her, pressing her breasts against Brenda’s bare shoulders, kissing her temple while Fritz moves inside her, his eyes closed in bliss. When Brenda gasps, “Sharon, fingers,” she slides her hand between them, down the soft flesh of Brenda’s belly, until her fingertips find a wet little button and begin to play with it.   
  
“Oh, baby,” Brenda cries, “oh,” and Fritz begins to move faster, fucking her until both she and Sharon are breathless with the force of it, and Sharon’s not sure how much longer her fingers can keep pace with the rhythm. Then Brenda bucks, moans, and comes, shivering in Sharon’s arms. Fritz holds still, sweat running down his face, obviously trying not to follow suit in case the other woman in the bed wants to wear him out too.   
  
Sharon does. In a minute. For now, she settles for kissing Brenda’s temple again, muttering, “Gorgeous, amazing,” while Brenda whimpers her way towards recovery. “So amazing.”  
  
Brenda wheezes out a laugh. “You two’ll be the death of me.”   
  
Fritz shudders against her, looking up at Sharon, who’s still caressing Brenda like the besotted fool she became long ago. “How ‘bout you?” he manages.  
  
“Hmm.” All the options stretch out before her. A banquet. She’s so aroused that she’s quivering like a plucked string, and yet she still hums in contentment when she says, “I can finish what I started. Taste you both together.”   
  
Fritz snarls in desperation, and slides out of Brenda as carefully as he can without finishing. He’s dripping all over the sheets and is clearly about two seconds away from climax. He’ll try to hold on for her, she knows, if she asks him to.  
  
Sharon changes her mind instantly. “Or,” she says lazily, pulling away from Brenda so she can lie back against the pillows and spread her own legs in invitation, letting him see exactly how wet she is, “you can just be selfish for a minute and then give me your full attention.” She holds out her hands.  
  
And then she tosses her head back in joy when he slams inside of her, already coming before he’s all the way in, shuddering in instant release. He follows her, not even thrusting, just spending in her while he buries his face in her throat.   
  
When she comes back to reality, she sees Brenda giving her a very smug smile. “Well. Somebody didn’t need that much attention after all,” she says, tracing Sharon’s sweaty cheek.   
  
“I never had any fun in high school,” Sharon says breathlessly. “I’m making up for lost time.”  
  
Brenda chortles in glee before rubbing her thumb over Sharon’s nipple. Fritz rears his head up just high enough to share a resigned smile with Sharon. The woman is insatiable. Who will be the death of whom?  
  
Oh, well. If it happens in this bed, Sharon at least knows she’ll go out in a blaze of glory. It’s more than she ever could have hoped for that morning when she woke up next to Fritz, terrified that her drunken idiocy had ruined two valuable friendships.   
  
Perhaps, in a fashion, it did. But that’s the problem with valuable things: they can be tallied and counted. Being friends with Chief Johnson and Agent Howard had begun as a boost for her career, perhaps even a step towards promotion; it had evolved into an easy companionship that, for a few hours at a time, kept the loneliness at bay. Its rewards were measurable.  
  
What they have now cannot be measured and is without price. Sharon turns her face to Brenda for a kiss, and tonight she casts the world away for love, counting it well lost.

* * *

  
When Brenda opens her eyes at eight o’clock the next morning, Sharon isn’t there. Brenda sits up in dismay, causing Fritz to grumble next to her. “Ungh,” he explains.  
  
“She’s gone,” Brenda says, but just then, she smells coffee, hears somebody moving around down the hall, and adds, “to the kitchen!”   
  
Feeling like a child on Christmas morning, she kisses Fritz hard on the cheek, while he chuckles. Then she bounds out of bed, grabbing her silky wrap on the way.  
  
Sharon’s got the waffle iron out and is mixing batter. She’s combed her hair, but she’s wearing Fritz’s bathrobe. Her clothes from the day before are still scattered in a trail from the kitchen to the bedroom. Brenda wonders if she retrieved her panties and is wearing them; then she decides that breakfast is more important than finding out.  
  
“When’d you get up?” she asks, as if it’s no big deal that Sharon Raydor hasn’t vanished with the dawn.   
  
“Not long ago.” Sharon gives her a look that isn’t quite apprehensive. More like shy. Brenda decides that if anybody in L.A. dares to be murdered this morning, and brings an end to this scene, then she will resurrect that person and kill them again, no matter how nice they were in life.  
  
That would also be preferable to turning the case over to Taylor. Brenda nods in satisfaction at her plan.  
  
She’s about to go fetch her first proper good-morning kiss from Sharon when Joel rubs up against her calf, purring insistently. His cereal bowl, as Sharon calls it, is empty, and Brenda makes a remorseful noise before scooping him up and kissing him instead. “Awww,” she says.   
  
“He’s the one who woke me, actually,” Sharon says, setting down the batter bowl. “By biting my toes. I’d have fed him, but I’m not sure where you keep the cereal.”  
  
“Why do you call it that?” Brenda asks, shaking her head as she picks up Joel’s bowl and heads for the laundry room. “It’s all made out of meat and stuff, Fritzy insists on getting him the good kind.”   
  
“You keep it in the laundry room?”  
  
“Well, it’s not people food, is it?” Brenda makes kissy noises at Joel as she fills his bowl and sets it down on the floor. He sticks his tail straight up the air, trills, and trots over before nose-diving into the food.   
  
“How much does he get?” Sharon asks, and clears her throat. “In case I’m the first one up. Um, some other time. Next time.”  
  
Brenda smiles at her and holds up the scoop. “This much exactly.” Then she looks plaintively at the batter bowl sitting abandoned on the counter. “How long till breakfast?”  
  
Sharon gives her a rare, full-fledged grin. “The waffle batter has to sit for five minutes first.”  
  
Brenda drops the scoop on top of the washing machine and steps over Joel, who is happily munching away. “I know a few good ways of spendin’ five minutes.”  
  
Sharon’s still grinning as Brenda stalks her. “That robe barely covers you,” she says, “it’s hardly even--”  
  
Brenda kisses her. When they part, Sharon is laughing. Brenda has no idea why, but it makes her feel lit up inside like the sun. She hears noises coming from the bedroom, and knows that Fritz will join them momentarily.   
  
Not every morning, she knows, will be like this. Maybe not even most mornings. But they have this one.   
  
She kisses Sharon again, first on her mouth, and then on her scar. After the night, morning comes. It always happens that way.  
  


**The End**

 


End file.
